Itoro Eze-Anaba is the founder of Mirabel Centre, the first Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Nigeria, which provides free medical and psycho-social support services to survivors of rape and sexual violence. Her exceptional work was noticed by the Queen of England who conferred on her the Commonwealth Point of Light Award in February this year. She tells News Editor, Ishaya Ibrahim, and Brands Correspondent, Pascal Oparada, some shocking stories of sexual crimes in Nigeria which her Centre has been handling.
How does it feel being a recipient of the Commonwealth Point of Light Award conferred on you by the Queen of England?
It feels good to be recognised by the Commonwealth, and more importantly the Queen of England. It means we are doing something and others are noticing it. But more importantly for me is the fact that the award was given on the issue we deal with, which is the issue of rape and sexual violence. We still live in a society where despite all the reports and evidence, a lot of us are still in denial, a lot of us are still blaming the victim, a lot are thinking it cannot happen to them.
A lot of people think when they read it on the pages of the newspapers, it is just a story, maybe it is made up because I’ve met people that ask me if these stories they read are actually true. So, the award for me is highlighting an issue that we would rather not talk about as a society. So, that’s more important for me than a personal award. It’s for all of us that are campaigning against rape and sexual violence in Nigeria.
It has been difficult to get rape victims to speak up. But you have handled more than 3,000 cases. How have you been able to get these victims to tell their stories?
We needed to find out why people were silent. Why were they not speaking up? Why were they not seeking help? When someone is raped, the next thing is to seek help. Many of us do not know how to give that help. So, the first thing is why did you go there, why did you wear what you wore, better keep quiet so that people don’t hear about it. That is what has been happening for a long time and it is still happening in many places. When you see a situation where those questions I just listed are not being asked, then you feel more comfortable talking about it.
The Mirable Centre is a sexual assault referral centre where survivors of rape and rape crime can get professional help, and this includes counseling and medical support free of charge. I’m emphasizing the fact that it is professional because you need to seek professional help. A professional counselor who is skilled or has been trained in giving counsel to survivors of sexual trauma is different from a counselor that was trained to give career guidance, is different from a counselor that was trained to give advice to the church or talks to married people or youths in a church setting.
It is a completely different game when you are dealing with survivors of rape. Now, the counselors at the Mirabel Centre have been trained to give counsel to survivors of rape. When we started in 2013, in the first month we had about 25 clients or thereabouts. Now, we are averaging 90. Some months we have 100.
Why is that so? It is because the story gets told of how they are treated at the Mirabel Centre. So, you have counselors that are compassionate. They know that even though they don’t have the experience of what you have gone through, but they are there with you from the point you get into the Centre up to the point you say I’m okay. So that gives a survivor the confidence to seek help at the Centre and then tell others about it.
Another thing is that we work closely with the police. About 75 percent of our cases are referred to us by the police, and at the end of the process, we give the police medical report which they use in prosecuting their cases. We also do awareness creation. We go to schools. We’ve almost gone to all the schools in Lagos State to talk about sexual violence. We go to churches, we go to mosques, we go to markets, we go to community meetings, we go everywhere to create awareness about these issues and let people know there are rules and guidelines on how to deal with survivors of rape.
So, those questions like ‘why you went there’ can never be asked at the Mirabel Centre. ‘What did you wear’ can never be asked at the Mirabel Centre. Those “why” questions are not part of what we do at the Mirabel Centre because no matter the response to it, it doesn’t justify what happened. So, we give the care professionally, but with a lot of sympathies, respect and dignity.
A survivor walks into Mirabel Centre, probably depressed, suicidal and not knowing what to do, he or she walks out feeling ‘at least there are people that understand what I am going through, there are people that have my back, there are people I can call upon when I am feeling low as a result of what happened.”
You’ve handled so many cases that are shocking and emotionally traumatizing. Is there any particular one that you find it most shocking?
We’ve seen over 3,500 cases now and I have not met over 3,500 clients. I read about some of them because I get a monthly report of cases that come to the Centre. But there is a particular case that shook me and makes me realise the importance of the Mirabel Centre. It’s a young girl who was being raped by her uncle. Her father knew. But her father was the one that was sending her to the uncle to be raped. When this happens, her uncle will pay her father for raping her. But when he traveled, her father started raping her. So, between her father and her uncle, she had abortion seven times.
And at the seventh time, her womb was removed. So, rather than deal with the issues, she was taken to a church, and it was said she was spiritually possessed. So, she became violent on the street and disrespectful. There was a time she broke somebody’s head with a bottle, and she was taken to LASUTH. I’ll say God bless the person that just said ‘let’s take this girl to the Mirabel Centre.’
So, she was brought to the Centre. The first time she came in, she said ‘well what else is new.’ But after going through the process, she came to the understanding that ‘yes it happened to her, she cannot be defined by what happened to her. She can move on despite what happened to her.’ So, we gave her all the encouragement and information that she needed, and she decided to go back to school. She got some money to pay her school fees. But it was not enough. She came back to the Centre to ask for some money. So, we rallied round and got the money. And when she was walking out of the Centre, she turned back at the door and she said ‘Aunty, I will make you proud.’ That story touches me. So, I always remember that. And it happened before she was 18. She was still a minor.
These are the kind of stories we hear at the Centre. And when you think you’ve heard it all, the next one comes and shocks you to the core. So, you are always ready for the next shock. The danger there is that, just as that story stays with me, it can be traumatizing. If you are not equipped to deal with it, you can take it home with you. It can become your own story. So, it can affect your relationship with people. It can make you become paranoid. It can make you see what is not there. It can make you be suspicious of everybody. So, you need to tell yourself at some point that you need to be able to deal with the trauma that comes with it.
What are the ages of the oldest and youngest victims that you have handled
The youngest person that has come to the Centre for treatment is four months old, and the oldest is 70 years old.
In 2013, something triggered the quest for you to do this. What is that?
It wasn’t in 2013. It was in 2003. When I was working at the Legal Defence and Assistance Project, one day a young woman walked into my office to tell me how much she has been battered by her husband and she wanted a solution to it. She wanted him to stop. When she left my office, as a lawyer I realised there was no law that takes care of people that have been battered in a domestic situation.
The most was what was in the penal code that talked about misdemeanor and felony. Interestingly, assault on a man carried three years while the assault on a woman carried two years. So those were the things I saw and I decided on my own that I needed to do something. I sat down and drafted a domestic violence bill, which was the first one in Nigeria, and I went to about 12 states to campaign for its passage into law.
In the process of campaigning for the bill to be passed into law in Lagos State, something had happened and I decided to test the bill on the street. It was in that process that I came across two teenagers. One told me how her father had been sleeping with her since she was 11 up until she was 14. How she had gone to her church to report and her pastor had told her to keep quiet about it, that it couldn’t have happened.
So, that got me thinking as to how would this happen. Is there nothing that can be done? Is there nowhere she can go for help? At that same time, British Council sponsored me to attend a seminar on Domestic Violence in Manchester. Part of the activities of the seminar was to visit a Sexual Assault Centre where survivors of rape and sexual violence receive support and care. As I went to that Centre and I came back, I knew I was going to set up that kind of Centre in Nigeria because of the story that that girl told me. That was in 2003. From 2003 to 2013, we were looking for money to set up a similar Centre, and it was only in 2013, ten years later that we were able to get money to set it up.
We have read so many cases of fathers having sexual intercourse with their children. But we also know that sexual stimulus among family members are rare. What have you found out? Those who indulge in it, is it for the sexual gratification or there is something else?
The issue of incest is actually very common. There are so many girls that are being introduced to sex by their father or their uncle, cousin or their brother, somebody in the family. It is happening. And even children at the age of four years are also being introduced to sex by family members. And that is why you have cases in nursery school where a classmate is doing one thing or another with another classmate and they are just between the ages of three, four, five because the perpetrator is a victim and has seen something he shouldn’t see or engage in something they shouldn’t be engaged in because a child will only replicate what he or she sees. So, that is what happens.
Back to your question, I don’t have excuses for perpetrators and I will never have excuses. Some people think it is ritual. For me, anything that you do with a minor is a crime. There are no excuses, there is no justification. There are cases where the father thinks it is his right to sleep with his daughter. Some think because she’s there, their mother ran away. You know we have instances where they say it’s the devil. That is the unique thing with Nigeria. The perpetrators will hardly deny that it happened. They would always blame the devil. Then I’ll say until I get the devil, I will hold you responsible.
There is really no justification for it because most times, people that rape have sexual partners. It is not because of lack of sexual partners. It is because the person is vulnerable and available and there is an opportunity. If there is no opportunity, the person will not rape. So, its just abuse of trust and making use of the opportunity that they shouldn’t use. It’s really heartbreaking for children in the home because your father is the one that should protect you. Your domestic environment is where you should feel safe. When you don’t feel safe in your home, where will you go to?
A child as young as eight years old is a prostitute and she was brought to our Centre. She was not only introduced to sex, she went to primary school and introduced her classmates and was taking them to a brothel. The problem is we are in denial. We don’t want to confront it. But the danger is, there’s always the possibility of a survivor becoming an abuser. So if you have 3,000 survivors, if they don’t get the professional help they will go out there and do it to others.
There was a time you said that the Centre was becoming overwhelmed because of the volume of cases you handle. That you needed support from the Lagos State government to enable you to continue to attend to cases that come to you. Has anything changed? Have you been getting local institutional support?
Because the services we provide at the Centre are free, and every month we get 90 and sometimes 100 cases, there’s always need for funds because we have to get the drugs, we have to pay for the test, we have to pay the doctors working there, we have to pay the staff because they are not working free. So, there is always need for funds and other kinds of support. Yes, we get some money from the Lagos State government. They have been very supportive. The money doesn’t take us for a year. But at least it takes us somewhere.
We also get money from individuals. We have people that give us N10,000 every month and they’ve been giving us for the past two years. We also have some organisations that come to say how can we support. They bring toiletries, they bring clothes. We also had an in-house friend that was giving us N30,000 for adult diapers for one of our clients. So, we’ve had that kind of support. We really do appreciate it.
But rape and sexual violence is not a comfortable issue for people to deal with because a lot of people are survivors without telling anybody, maybe they are uncomfortable talking about it. When you provide support to a survivor, it’s not visible. People don’t see it. Unlike if you are supporting a fashion show, concert, it’s out there. It can be publicised. People can talk about it. But when you are giving support to a survivor of rape, you can’t talk about it in the newspapers. You can’t say these are the people I supported because survivors don’t want to be exposed unless they are ready to talk about it. So it becomes difficult for corporate organisations to really put money there because they want people to know what they are doing. But at the same time, it’s not always necessary that you publicise. You know what you are doing. You are putting somebody back to the road to life. That person will never forget you.
When we congratulated you for what you are doing for girls who are survivors of sexual crimes, you reminded us that boys are also affected. Tell us about it
We’ve had at least 70 cases of males that were raped by men. And the men that are raping them some of them are religious advisers, pastors, teachers, friends. It’s happening. A lot of people hold their pastors in high esteem. We had a particular case where a guy was looking for work and probably told his pastor that he was looking for work. One day, his pastor called him. He went there and the pastor said he wanted to have sex with him. And he said no. The pastor said it is either you agree with me or I call three other people to come in. At that point, the guy was forced to have sex with the pastor and the pastor recorded it so that he would not report the case. We had cases where a young man went to visit his friend and he was drugged. He sees sexual act being performed on him but he cannot resist it because he was drugged. He was just looking until when it was all over. So it’s happening.
Have you been threatened in the course of doing your work?
We expect it. It has happened in different ways. It’s really not something you want to highlight. We have had a case of somebody who probably tracked me and then went back to the survivor to say that the person you think will help you has gone out of the country. And I don’t know the perpetrator. I have never spoken to the perpetrator and I was actually out of the country at that time. And he now used that to blackmail the survivor. So, that has happened. We’ve had a case where the family of the perpetrator came looking for the doctor that wrote the medical report. We’ve had cases where a family of the perpetrator under a different guise, came in to see what we are doing.
Do you collaborate with other NGOs in providing care for survivors?
When you are dealing with issues of rape and sexual violence, each case is unique. The needs of each survivor are different from the next survivor. And you cannot do everything on your own. That is why we have the domestic and sexual violence response team that is made up of different classes of people who in one way or the other provide care. For us, we don’t have a shelter. So, we have to collaborate with people that have shelter. So, if you need a shelter, we get in touch with our partner that provides shelter. If you need a change of school and we cannot do that, we get in touch with government or any institution that deals in schools. If you live where we cannot get to you, because we get calls from all parts of the country, sometimes outside the country. If you are living outside Lagos State, we try to get in touch with someone that can help you where you are and then we give you telephone counseling if it is possible. So, we don’t do it alone. What we cannot do, we send you to the people who can do it. But we are with you wherever you are.
Do you also handle cases of sex trafficking?
Any case of sexual violence is handled at the Centre whether you are trafficked or kidnapped or whatever, once it has to do with sexual assault, we handle it at the Centre. What we normally do is any case that involves a domestic servant we make sure NAPTIP is aware of it because there is a possibility of trafficking.
What kind of help do you need to continue providing care for survivors?
If we have the funds that will cover our expenses for five years, then we will say this is the kind of help that we have been waiting for. We spend about N2.5 million to N3 million in a month to take care of our clients. We spend probably N30 to N45 million, depending on the number of clients that we have in a year. If we have that for five years, we know that we won’t go looking for money for the next five years.
Lagos has a special court that handles rape cases and other domestic violence. Whenever our reporter who covers that court files her report, we hear Mirabel Centre coming up during the trial for collaborating with the police towards getting justice for victims. So, if anyone commits sexual crimes in Lagos, there is a high chance of them getting justice. What about in other states.
Rape is happening everywhere, so there is a need for at least Mirabel Centre in all the states. Lagos State should actually have at least three. I know there are two other Centres that have come up since Mirabel Centre started. Every government needs to invest in the development of its people. If you are interested in the development of your people, you cannot neglect gender-based violence because of the ripple effects it has on the community. A child that has been sexually abused or molested, it doesn’t stop with that child. There is a potential for that child to become an abuser and the child can take it on the society.
I have two daughters. How do I educate them to be aware of the acts that can lead to abuse?
How did you teach her to eat? Children are not embarrassed by sex. The adults are the ones embarrassed by it. If you teach a child that this is your eye, this is your nose, this is your breast, this is your vagina, they will take it as part of their body. But it is the adult that will be embarrassed to mention the word vagina and penis. To a child, it’s all part of the body. We all transfer our disposition to the child.
You see a mother that brings a child to the Centre and cannot even mention the word vagina. If you don’t mention it to a child how will the child know? So, when somebody is abusing the child, the child will say somebody touched my Kokoro. They have different names for it. Somebody touched my Kokoro is different from somebody touched my penis.
If he says somebody touched my penis, you become clear that something is going on. But if he says somebody touched my Kokoro, and if the person he is reporting to doesn’t know what is Kokoro, the abuse will go on. Call the things by their real names, as they are. And teach your child that there are people out there that are not good. Teach your child what is a good touch and a bad touch. Be observant.
There might be somebody that will come to your house and your child doesn’t want to greet that person, and this is somebody that she has been talking to before. Don’t force your child to go and greet that person. Find out what is going on. Why is my child uncomfortable with that person? Make inquiries, teach your child to say no. We always want our children to be respectful, obedient. When you tell your child to sit there she sits there, you are grooming your child for disaster.
Allow your child to have a voice. A child that is talkative will hardly be abused. If she is abused you will know because you will see the difference in the child. The perpetrator will be afraid because the child will talk. Watch out for any man that is always close to children. I’m not saying all of them are but know that it can happen. Equip your child with enough information so that they can say no. Tell them that if anybody touches your breast or vagina, they should scream. Let them know that whatever happens, you will always be by their side because a perpetrator will say if you talk, your mummy will die, if you talk your mummy will beat you. And truly, if they talk their mummies beat them, thereby validating what the perpetrator said. And if it happens again she wouldn’t talk.